Apparently the Apartheid Museum is struggling to attract young visitors. To increase awareness of the tragic history that it commemorates, its ad agency, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris has launched a campaign centred around the notion of “a history forgotten is a future lost”.

The agency made some viral videos of interviews that expose the ignorance amongst young people about apartheid. But while the videos show that the young people interviewed haven’t got a clue about apartheid history, they fail to present the ultimate message — that the consequence of this ignorance is “a future lost”. It is therefore highly unlikely that this campaign will encourage youngsters to brush up on their history or make a visit to the museum.

If the Apartheid Museum wants to attract young people it will need to find a conceptual approach that can effectively portray its contemporary relevance to young people. These videos, sadly, do not.

btw, the Apartheid Museum needs to make itself relevant in the contemporary political discourse if it wants to get attention, from the young and old alike. For example, when Julius claims that Sharpeville is an ANC event, they need to have a special exhibition up detailing the history of the event and the PAC. And then issue press releases about their exhibition, call into talk radio, etc, to catch the momentum on the controversy and public interest in the issue. That way, they can play a role in preventing the distortion of history and attract new audiences.

apartheid museum needs to work closely with youth institutions(schools and tertiary) by visiting schools and have talks that will raise awareness, inform youth about their exhibition themes and importance of know the history. This can be done by involving youth in a speech contest and quiz that involves museum information where they can compete for small prizes that will evoke their interest and their will get more information while the museum is realising where the gaps are and fill them up. try to start with interesting games befor we move to the exhbitions. museum must be for social harmony